Saw this cartoon and had instant flashbacks to academia. Every graduate seminar, every conference, had presentations where the speakers were shuffling their transparencies on to and off the overhead projector faster than a card shark dealing out hands of poker. The one that probably set the record for number of slides used was a civil engineering grad student at a Michigan Tech Sigma Xi interdisciplinary symposium. The dude gave a 5-minute summary of his research in to how quickly fecal coli form bacteria broke down in sunlight using data collected observing sewage flow from Syracuse into Lake Onondaga. I know his slides were on and off the projector a lot faster than the shit traveled across the lake. His dexterity in handling his foot-high stack of slides made such an impression that it's been well over 30 years and I still recall the talk, which is more than I can say about my own contribution to the event.
Not havong had to suffer the pain of symposium slide shows, I can only draw a comparison to the countless hours I spent forced to sit quiety while my dad recounted every minute of that last trip to Hong Kong or the trip to some demolished German town during his post WW2 experience. His images were great. It was the droning voice that accompanied them that made me fall asleep.
ReplyDeletei have bad memories of slide shows
ReplyDeleteI remember this all too well. So glad those days are over
ReplyDeletegone the way of like cave paintings and stone tablets
ReplyDeletethe Ol'Buzzard